We’ve had a number of people contact us this morning about a teaser for an interview with David Braben in Eurogamer, which is due to go out next week. David was a bit equivocal in what he said, and the difference between the consumer and educational launches wasn’t made clear. Some other bits of the press have picked it up too, but have kind of gone in feet-first; Tom’s Hardware currently have a big splash on their homepage saying “Raspberry Pi not available to consumers until September”. You can probably gather that I am not having a fantastic day dealing with this. I’m doing my best to get both articles amended. (Edit to add – the lovely folk at Eurogamer are scrambling to make changes already. Thanks guys!)

I’ll quote from the Tom’s Hardware piece (Edit to add – Tom’s Hardware have also made a correction now; thanks very much!) – before you have a heart attack, please be aware that what you’re about to read is COMPLETELY WRONG:

Despite Monday’s report that the first batch of boards for Raspberry Pi will be completed on February 20, the $25/$35 credit card-sized computer won’t be available for public consumption until 3Q12. Co-creator David Braben is hoping this will be the actual public release timeframe given the team doesn’t endure additional delays as reported earlier this week.

“We’ve not got a pre-order [system] for the commercial one yet because we need to determine the price, determine roughly when it’s going to be,” he told Eurogamer. “We have a good idea that it will be sort of in Q3 this year, but we can’t be certain. There are a lot of variables in terms of what we need to get ready. We don’t know completely but we’re moving very quickly.”

What’s that? Will this little rig not be $25 or $35? Sounds like we may be shelling out a few extra Jacksons than originally thought.

I’ll take these one by one.

You will be able to buy a Raspberry Pi from the end of February, from this website. The “consumer release” that Eurogamer is talking about is actually the educational release, which, as you’ll be aware if you’ve been hanging out on our forums, will come with a kid-targetted software stack, a heap of written support materials, and a standard case.

The model A will cost $25 and the model B will cost $35. These prices will not change (unless we can change them downwards). Price is such an important part of what we’re doing in trying to change the way people use computers that we’d be totally, totally mad to move the price point. The educational release’s case will not add to the price if we can possibly help it.

Thanks for pointing that out. In my case it clarifies even before I could get confused as I haven’t come across mentioned article yet ;)
But you also bring up some pieces of informatione you otherwise would have to dig for in the rather lively forums. I didn’t know (or maybe I forgot) the edu boards will come with a case, a stack and a manual.
Also it’s great to read that as soon as you got the first batch everyone will be able to buy one in the online shop. Maybe some people were wondering if you would allow preorders of any kind, if normal users would have a chance of receiving a batch #1 device or if you had already sold most or all of them in advance..

My problem about lack of pre-orders is I have a feeling that the first batch of 10,000 will sell out in a few minutes, and I won’t get a chance to get my order in. So, assuming they sell out fast, how long will it take to get a second batch in? I’m assuming that since all the manufacturing kinks are worked out, that would be 2-3 weeks, correct?

For those people that are scared that the first batch will sell-out instantly and that a pre-order system would give them a chance… what makes you think that the pre-order system wouldn’t also sell out instantly? All that would have happened is that the “there are no more RaspPi’s to sell” point would have been moved forward in time. My only hope is that if they do sell out instantly, they do so to people who understand what they are buying. I’d hate to see a rush on them followed by 9999 comments in the forum asking “but how do I make it run Windows?”

The pre-ordering would do 2 things:
1) more people are likely to order when the product is available (a bird in the hand, so to speak), rather than pre-order. That itself would give those pre-ordering a better chance.
2) If there are 50,000 pre-orders, then they will know to have 50,000 in the first batch instead of 10,000.

Sadly the system requirement of WOA appear to be beyond what the Pi will be capable of for now. I’m not sure about the processor requirements but WOA needs a minimum of 1GB of RAM… according to wikipedia anyhow (thus it may not be entirely accurate)

As the kids say, “LOLZ”. For so many young people, “Windows” and “computer” go together like “peanut” and “butter” (sorry for the Americanism). I’m looking forward to showing to kids what THEY can do with a computer sans Windows.

It made a difference, since you can get an idea of how many pieces you are going to sell, at least. It would have helped out to adjust the number of orders to the manufacture company. Even more, would have helped people to know how long they need to wait before getting a chance to buy on the first, second, third or whatever batch.

Even if there is no a pre-order system on the sell yet, I think it will help you out anyway in the future.

“It made a difference, since you can get an idea of how many pieces you are going to sell,”

It might have made a difference! Though not necessarily for good. I really liked RasPi people’s approach to this, which is less risky. Maybe because I’m a cautious type myself. From life experience, when it’s about business, less than 50% of risky people get there, and more than 50% of the cautious people. For me it was one of the signs that “these guys really mean get the job done appropriately”.

Anyways you might want to think like this, “Let it be late, but let it be merry” :) [it’s an Armenian saying, and it rhymes in the original]

Except there is the issue of funding which is always the limitation of how many you can order at any one time. Even if you know you can sell 100k you may not be able to afford to build 100k in one go. The Foundation has a business plan which takes all that in to account.

Just to point something out. If the Raspberry PI team collected pre-orders that would imply recieving the funds immediately instead of some time in the future. That being said wouldn’t the virtue of that fact alone mean the following batch be manufactured sooner?

Actually under UK distance selling rules, anything anything that’s mail ordered has it’s payment placed in escrow until dispatch. Most of the time it’s done by the CC company as a pending payment, but sometimes the supplier provides the escrow. Raspi Foundation wouldn’t even have their hands on the funds until the batch is dispatched.

No surpise on the sloppy way it was reported on Tomshardware. I remember back in the day when Toms was the place to go for accurate, timely, info and reviews. Now its just a way for a bunch of tek guys to make money :-( Reviews, especially of hardware, are often wrong and inaccurate where even a tek noob can spot mistakes (like monitor reviews where the number of USB ports is said to be none but the picture shows 3!).

Stupid paparazzi always looking for more views & advertising money – even if it means hurting people. :-(
If this were 4chan, we would have LOIC-ed their IPs. But we are civilized, so they should be thankful for this and should post a retraction and apologies.

Really not Eurogamer’s fault. They’re a great team and they’re very keen to see Raspberry Pi succeed; I think some wires just got crossed, but then Tom’s indulged in a sort of Chinese whispers thing which compounded the problem.

Ha – no, that was something else entirely. Wired asked us to give them a copy of our BOM. We told them we couldn’t do that because it’d land us in hot water with our suppliers (particularly Hynix and Broadcom); if their other customers were to use our BOM to demand similar pricing, we’d be in trouble. So instead, they *made up* a BOM (which was gratuitously wrong). They told us they were doing this, and we asked them not to; saying we’d be happier for no article to appear at all. They published it anyway. Our suppliers started getting calls from their other customers, as predicted; we had a lot of apologising to do.

Slightly less serious, but still damned annoying: Wired also demanded pictures of a cased version of the final board. This was well before Christmas, at which point we didn’t *have* any beta or final boards, still less any cased ones (the cases are being finished after the board themselves are finished at the end of this month). They didn’t take no for an answer, and kept asking, and asking, and asking…and then photoshopped a case onto an alpha board (wrong size, wrong proportions) for their magazine. Which is misleading, but it’s nothing like as damaging as their efforts with the BOM were.

Needless to say, they’re off the list for press samples, and they’re not getting any more interviews either (they ran Rob ragged in preparation for this, then never used any of the material they’d got from him). Wired seem to believe they’re still as relevant as they were in 1998. Luckily for us, they’re not; we’ve interacted with hundreds of journalists over the last six months or so, and not a single one of them has been as hard to work with as Wired were.

It’s always been clear to me, still is. It took me no time at all on my first visit here to work out that the $25 version has no NIC, the $35 does.
It’s a bit sad when online articles propagate such misleading information when all that’s needed is little more careful research before posting. Don’t stress too much though, if anyone is concerned they can check back here for the real information :-) Plus, aren’t you going back to that cool hotel on the cliff again soon ?

I wondered what happened to the News Of The World reporters. It seems all journalism is these days is a way to try and panic people with false information and incorrect claims. There is less journalism and more editorials dressed up to pretend to be journalism.

Again, I should really make it clear that this wasn’t Eurogamer’s fault; it just seems David wasn’t particularly clear in what he was saying. I’d save my ire for Tom’s Hardware, who went for a really needlessly aggressive headline to accompany the thing which (read the comments under their post) has really set the vapourware cats among the “Crapberry Puke” pigeons.

Tomshardware/Eurogamer should check there source details…and strange as it may seem why not..check Raspberry Pi itself..Toms & Euro gamer are Websites that have been around for years and should no better..ive sent some links and info to them and show that blogs can get there information corect..why not the big boys.
Poor Liz..

To be fair, it seems Eurogamer did, and David sent them a not-very-clear clarification before they went to press (he forwarded it to me earlier). The problem was just a use of the word “commercial” where he should have said “educational”, which he repeated in the clarification!

What dissapoints me is the fact that the TH guys did contact the RPi, but simply decided to “produce” some information as they did not accept no for an answer.
And, since they really did not like the answer, in fact the whole article damaged the RPi a lot.
But, rest assured, there are guys around that kept your back – I already calmed few of my friends as soon as I found the pre-order information ;)

We found that they did mail us (in the middle of the night, UK time, when we were asleep) – Eben responded to them as soon as he saw the mail, but the article had already been posted by the time we were awake and in front of a computer. Part of the time zone dividend, I’m afraid.

You probably will have to yell at Tom’s another time for not understanding that this:

Back in December, we heard that the Raspberry Pi mini PC would be available in January. As you’ve probably noticed, it’s already February, and the only availability we’ve seen is through eBay for upwards of $2500. Obviously, many people don’t have a couple of grand lying around to blow on a computer willy-nilly, and there was only a limited number of them available through the auctioning site. However, it seems Raspberry Pi is on track to launch for real this month.

was more of a charity thing and not “lol we ebay them for 100 times their value one at a time, get screwed”.

I used to be a fan of Toms Hardware.
Whilst working for a large motherboard manufacturer I met some guys from Toms Hardware at Cebit including Tom himself.
I found them to be rude, obnoxious and unpleasant.
I stopped reading Toms Hardware.

Tax is not included in that price. But schools (at least in the UK; I’m not sure about tax regimes elsewhere in the world off the top of my head) and other non-profit organisations won’t have to pay VAT, and if you’re outside the EU, you won’t have to pay VAT either. Import duties will depend on where you live.

Unless you’re a VA school shelling out more than £2000 in one go for anything – then you have to pay VAT and can’t claim it back. Our School Business Manager is on the warparth….HMRC is currently demanding back-VAT from us….

i dont get it, a company or school for that matter should only pay vat if they intend to sell an item, do you mean you have to pay vat and reclaim it later? if its for use not resale you shouldnt pay vat. i work in the health service and we claim back vat on anything we buy

Yes, but you get charged it initially, supplying to Education in the UK is a bit more compliacted than ‘… won’t have to pay VAT’ VAT registered business’s have to charge VAT to all UK schools, it is just that LEA Schools effectively recover the VAT (Their budgets are set ‘EX VAT’)
Private schools and Charities have to pay VAT and AIUI non LEA schools like Academy’s have an ‘adjustment’ made to their funding.

That’s exactly what I thought when I read the Tom’s Hardware article last night. Frankly, I appreciate the fact that it’ll give me a mildly better chance to buy one when they show up on the site, but it’s bad, wrong, and I really hope they offer a retraction, change, and apology.

Guess you’ll just have to prove them wrong in ~2 weeks when the first boards start shipping! :)

I honestly don’t get why everyone seems so interested in seeing you guys fail. Between the /. idiot brigade and now parts of the press, it’s like they’re all hoping what you’ve all promised fails rather than pushing you to succeed. Sad little minds.

Thankfully the first I heard about the lax “reporting” was on this site. I dont think many of the haters appreciate the idea behind the raspi and thats why they distrust the price of the board.
I get the need to press etc, but I’m not going to believe anything about the raspi unless its on this site.

You’re the greatest Liz. Don’t fret too much, if people are serious about wanting a slice of the Pi then they will do their own research and come to their own conclusions. Who believes what the pree says anyway? Wired have brought their disdain upon themselves, hopefully the other reporting medias will learn from their mistake!

For RasPi news i come directly here, not via some commercially motivated content aggregator (I prefer hearing horses speak for themselves and i never trust a whispering-asian).

Haters:
Who exactly could have anything unpleasant to say about the RasPi team/device/project/foundation? What bit of what they are doing is not awesome? OK, Broadcom arent gonna do too badly out of it but even as a commerical company they are apparently cooperating and collaborating in the desired spirit (well done BCM).

‘device xxx’ is way better than the RasPi:
OK off you go then – more stock from the first batch for those of us who want to follow the true goals of the project and *participate in the community*. Oh, and yeah, XBMC on RasPi – that should be a tertiary concern at best for any purchaser.

money, money, money… who cares? :
If there was a commercial and educational price option (think MS Academic Licensing) I would understand if i couldnt get it at the lower educational price, in the same way that I cant currently buy MS Office for £35.
Even if the price point was $50/B I would still buy (more than) one – the reason Raspberry are aiming at this price is to make it affordable for educational projects (from school funding). Yeah, i have some plans later to use the devices extensively in my house and hopefully commercially too but right now I would just like it for me and my 5 year old son to actually get our hands (computer) dirty with some small home projects with the RasPi and maybe a bit of lego ;-).

Raspberry keep it up – dont let these idiots muddy the waters. The devices will be ready when they are ready, i hope I can get a Batch1 device but I will understand if i can’t; the suspense in the interim however is killing me! :-)

Well, it’s not *that* bad – I think any project that attracts this much interest gets some weird comments. And as far as damage limitation goes: although Tom’s haven’t amended their post, it *does* seem that nobody has copied their story, which is good news. And Eurogamer were brilliant.

I feel for you and the team, must be hard to deal with this when all you would like to do is work on the actual product =) I used to read TH in early 2000ish but stopped when I thought they lost track of things (IMO).

I hope you guys can leave this behind you as fast as possible. I´m looking forward to my own Raspberry Pi =)

I think raspberry.org site is not in its best. Maily because its like a blog, and should not be like that. I think two or three things made clear in the front page would be effective in avoiding some of these confusions:

We’ve spent the evening talking about this; it’s interesting to note that another story that got real traction in the press was one where Eben appeared to be slagging Apple off (I really think we need to send the boys on a media training course…)

My feeling is that if a story is negative, then it gets more eyeballs. More eyeballs = more advertising bucks. Human nature, unfortunately.

Was that the one about the RaspPi having twice the GPU power of the iPhone 4S? I saw something to that effect on Ars Technica and a few other sites, but didn’t think it a bad thing, as it’s comparing two devices with very different characteristics. It seemed a point of comparison only, but I can see how the media would run with it.
Anything that mentions Apple tends to get coverage, especially if your product is described as “more than” or “better than” Apple’s in some way.
It’s sad that some parts of the media are determined to make drama where there is none. Keep your chin up though Liz, you’re just about at the point where people will be getting the boards in their hands, and all the hard work will start paying off. The amount of information you’ve provided to us through this site has been amazing, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who really appreciates it.

Frankly I’m getting sick of this publicity because its the wrong kind. First of all, I’ve never been a fan of Tom’s Hardware because they’re incredibly biased. But what really bothers me is how people keep treating RPi like its going to be a great PC, and its not; and I feel like they just want to take advantage of the price. What RPi is intended for is exactly what its good at, along side being a decent low-power server or media center.

It wouldn’t bother me so much if these weren’t the same people who stereotype Linux as a terminal-based and hacker’s OS. These are the people who would buy RP and bitch about it because it can’t run Windows or doesn’t have all the hardware specs they’re looking for.

RPi is an insanely great product, but it isn’t meant for the average person.

Mindstorms is an excellent first trainer, especially for GCSE and Key Stages students without prior control-systems knowledge. That is what it does.

For more in-depth access to control/programming/electronics you need an undedicated bare-board system.

I have a class of young people who want to learn about control and electronics (specifically robotics, because that’s what is ‘cool’), and the RasPi will fit the bill admirably in both price and hardware specification.

Linux is great – flexible and scalable if less accessible than Windows (mind you, the last time I used it was a pair of SuSE 8.0 fileservers I cobbled together). What’s more, it’s available at a great price! (When you have so many calls on your educational computing budget, price becomes a BIG factor).

All in all, RasPi looks to be a very useful ‘toy’ – a niche product that will probably fit several unexpected niches, and not just in education.

[…] release’ that Eurogamer is articulate about is indeed a educational release,” reads a latest Raspberry Pi update. Raspberry Pi also reassures everybody that indication A will be $25 and indication B will cost […]

People with a set of mind like yours delay education and progress, if you don’t have anything good to contribute with you should take your negative comments somewhere else.
This is a positive community, going towards the goal of improving education.

Last time there were some pre-production boards I didn’t get a chance to get one. Now there will be probably 10 000 of them but I do have a question, can I or others that can prove they are distro developers make a reservation, just in case ?

If you really are a distro person, you could email Liz and you may be put on a list. If there is a list. We always have some in reserve for marketing/promotional or other purposes that align with the aims of the Foundation.

Thanks , I’ll try and contact Liz. While I do understand the first come, first serve policy I think distro support is important and we, as devs need to have the hardware before the users get it so we can properly support it.

There are already a number of distro people who have alpha boards, so we are aware of the necessity. However, there are an awful lot of disparate Linux distro’s, so not everyone is going to get one – that would take most of the first batch, and its not just distro’s that are important to the foundation – it’s the software stack on top that also vital. These initial releases ARE intended for development, prior to the educational releases in about Q3.

Why? Because we can.
Why? Because people want the bare board
Why? Because a case would take time and money to design and make
Why? Because a case will increase the cost of the device.
Why? Because it doesn’t really need a case at this stage

We will be selling a case late on for the educational edition. You wont be getting a cased version for $25. It’s not possible.

The circuit board is a circuit board – its not any more dustproof, shockproof or moisture proof than any other circuit board. That said, I have been carrying a bare board around with me in a rucksack and it always works. These devices are more robust than you might think.

Plus: What some of we engineer-types do is build a bare-board into a piece of equipment that we’re developing. I’d resent spending hard-won cash on a case that would be scrapped as soon as the equipment was bought.

hmm, I’d prefer a lot more packing around a device that’s travelling by post than I’d like around that device once it’s sitting on my desk. If you make a nifty cut-and-fold template for producing a svelte cardboard case from the shipping box, I’m sure many people would thank you… :-)

A case doesn’t make it a computer. If you want a case, go down to your local electronics/hobbyist shop, buy one, and install it yourself. If you can’t do that, then you’re probably not the right kind of person to be buying and using this computer.

You probably weren’t around at the beginning of the personal computer revolution. A bare board was the norm, and you’d solder in the components yourself. The Raspberry Pi will be prepopulated, making it a great hobby board that (I think) will bring some excitement back into the hobby. For education, it’s better to see what’s under the hood, but they’ll have cases anyway.
A lot of people have their own uses in mind, and a case wouldn’t work for them.
Lastly – you say $25 was hard earned? Really? That’s a few light lunches, a week’s worth of take-away coffees, or a night at the cinema. That’s *nothing* and I’m amazed at your demands upon a charity that owes you nothing.

If you’d like to see what a time and money pit a nice plastic casing can be, head over to openpandora.org and go looking through the news postings from 2009-2010, noting how many of them were just about trying to get a decent case made for the device. Granted, it was a more complex case than the RasPi, because it is a mini-laptop, but even so, the case saga is a real education as to what it takes to turn out a nicely packaged piece of electronics.

[IMHO] In one of Eben’s interviews he did acknowledge that many of the first batch boards are likely to be bought by people from the “maker community”. Plenty of stores sell bare Arduino boards to happy customers, so a bare RasPi board is not going to put them off, and if anything a bare board makes it clear that if you expect a nice turnkey system with lots of stable software available from the moment you take it out of the box, you’d be better served by waiting a bit longer until it becomes more like a traditional consumer product, instead of a fantastically nifty “component” that many people are very eager to work with.

Also, when you decide to put a case on a bare board and start selling it as a finished good, you’ll no doubt have to submit the device for RF emission testing, etc., in order to show CE compliance before you can start selling anything. Delay, fiddling, expense… but if you start selling bare boards first, you can do the case development and testing in parallel with actually getting units in front of early adopters who can deal with the RF/static protection/child safety aspects themselves.

I had last a discussion with a journalist of a big technology website that states that publishing on the internet has evolved from a couple of hobbyist to “serious” educated journalism.

The problem is that with that “professionalism” the rate of tabloidism (I just made this up) and FUD just to fetch more viewers (which increases the number of hits that is very easy to sell to advertisers) has increased tremendous.

For a lot of sites (I look at http://slashdot.org or a dutch site like tweakers.net which in my head is famous for these shenanigans) it isn’t about correctly stating news but to spread the most inflammatory catchy news or even FUD to get their page views up which is good commercially. It is really sick if you think about it.

Agreed. Slashdot still has some good articles, but on the other hand, you see headlines that are a question rather than a concrete answer, which immediately sets it up for lots of speculation and little truth. Sometimes, even the summaries are wrong, or misinterpreting the actual article, on those kinds of posts.

Tom’s Hardware has good reviews, but I’d never read their reporting. I don’t know why there’s such a disparity but their round-ups and reviews are usually pretty good and thorough- their reporting team, however, is just a waste of time. I don’t know why they even bother with it.

This may be a language difficulty! You WILL be able to buy the boards from the first batch when they go one sale in the very near future – anyone can. The only issue might be that this first batch sells out very fast, so you will need to be quick!

This appears to be a great innovation and I’m very interested in purchasing one of your boards when available. I will need to find out the mailing/shipping costs to Australia when you have these.
Regards Geoff

I think we are due an update of some sort soon. It has been 8 days since any real news was posted. Any update from the factory? Pictures of an assembled unit for example. Would also be interesting to know what shipping costs will be? Or if you are going to China? Just something to keep people calm for another week and a bit.

Disgustingly busy with meetings and dealing with phone calls and emails at the moment; and there are two important pieces of news in particular which we can’t post about until certain boxes have been ticked. Keep your fingers crossed for a “real news” post in the next few days.

1. Correct. Although many places already have the majority of that equipment already available.
2. Those things are rubbish, and even more rubbish if you want to learn to program on them, which is the base purpose of the Raspi. You still need to add mouse keyboard and monitor to make them useful. Which then makes them twice the price of the Raspi, for something not as good.
3. None/Few of them support Linux, with its associated plethora of compilers and available software. They often require a desktop PC to build software for them (e.g Arduino), which rather negate the point of the Raspi in the first place. And built in video is required. How do you propose doing programming courses when you cannot see what you are typing?

Anyway, this subject has been done to death elsewhere in the comments and on the forums, take a look.

The 7″ tablet PC in question runs Android Linux and you can install custom applications on the device. It’s a very sturdy and well built device with built-in WiFi and camera. Another alternative (cost free) is to use your Android mobile device to deploy and run your newly coded applications.

Cross compilers (SDKs) which target Android, iPhone and other platforms are available. They include emulators so that you can develop and test programs on your existing PC/laptop/Mac/Windows/Linux as if it was running on the target device. Many schools and universities already have PCs and laptops available thus don’t necessarily need to spend more.

Developing an application to run on a tablet PC and mobile (making use of multitouch IO, tilt and pan, camera and graphics at the same time) – at costs lower than the complete working RPi – could be even more motivating/inspiring than doing it on a bare development board.

If you’d like to teach hardware IO programming than you might as well connect a MCU board to the tablet PC/PC/laptop via the USB connector.

The complete RPi setup will actually cost quite a lot so I’d just like to make a point that software development is a multifaceted discipline. I think that a single development board (that emulates how software development was done back in the 80′ on a BBC micro) will not provide a universal solution. For educational purposes it is likely that various teaching tools will need to be used.

By all means purchase RPis – at the list price they are a giveaway – but don’t invest much more. If you’re spending more than £35 or £50 per seat then there are good or better alternatives available.

Targeting Android (and much of your post) *completely* misses the point – to do it you need ANOTHER PC to do the compilation (and a pretty high spec one at that for those who have experienced the Android Dev environment). This project aims to get computers in to the hands of people who don’t have access to computers that they can program on (which isn’t the same as just having access to a computer). I’m also not sure why you have mentioned schools and universities that already have PC’s. If they already have PC’s they don’t need the Raspi anyway, so are not the target audience.

Tilt, pan, multitouch etc? Why? We don’t even have enough people who can write Hello World programs at the moment. Introducing them to all that stuff seems a little premature. Fine once you have a grounding, but not for first principle teaching. Use the Pi to find out who is interested. They can do a lot with it. Then more advanced students move on to bigger machines.

And I reiterate. Those tablets are cheap for a reason (as is the Raspi of course). And completely unsuited to teaching programming, unlike the Raspi. Also, I cannot find one at less than £100 inc VAT, so about 4 times the price.

However, if you want to buy one, go ahead, but please point out better alternatives at £50 per seat, because I don’t know of any. Links required, and evidence they are better for teaching.

And please don’t try to tell me about software development, I’ve been doing it professionally for over 30 years.

> And please don’t try to tell me about software development,
> I’ve been doing it professionally for over 30 years.

Someone with your experience should know that with computing science there are hundreds of different technologies available to learn, select and efficiently make use of. These diverse technologies include various IC solutions, buses, protocols and languages. Each of which provide capabilities to make use of, pose challenges to get integrated and at the same time make the subject interesting to get involved in.

I’ve been involved in the subject for a while having built my first micro (with TV output) back in 1983 by designing a PCB, soldering the components together and writing programs in machine code – so I know a little bit about computing as well :)

> Use the Pi to find out who is interested. They can do a lot with it.
> Then more advanced students move on to bigger machines.

For this reason I’d think that multiple solutions should be used in education rather than creating a hype about just one. Pupils might also have different preferences as to what they’d like to achieve with their applications.

A cost free solution would be to use pupils’ own mobile phones as they run capable ARM cores and Android Linux or iOS operating systems. This could be quite an effective way of teaching as well, getting kids to develop apps they can deploy to their mobiles and share with friends, then publish to Marketplaces and App Store. This assumes that most schools already have PCs and laptops available and can run the SDK and emulator on their host OS.

Any basic Hello World application, no matter whether it’s developed on the Raspi or another platform will need to be accompanied with a set of instructions. Following these instructions might be as easy on a host PC as having it directly run on the target such is the case with the Raspi.

It’s getting some good reviews. I’m sure that given the quantities required anyone who is purchasing in quantities would be able to get even better pricing and request that a good quality touch screen is used.

These are a few examples of alternatives available in the UK which would be ideal for teaching (have already been used for teaching) and can also be used in real applications as they are CE/FCC certified products.

Yes, I am aware of all those technologies, and more. Not sure what they have to do with grass root programming though. Although I am aware of them, most I have never had to deal with in my programming career (mostly embedded as well, which some may find surprising). I expect the same applies to most of software engineers out there. Once again I find myself having to say that the Raspi is for grass roots programming – to get people interested who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford it. That includes schools who are always on a budget.

If you want to teach all those bus protocols you are talking more university level teaching – not the aim of the RasPi, although there has been lots of interest in those areas as well. Same applies to the devices you link to – more suited to University level course than schools and primary schools.

And once again I find myself having to say – those tablets are crap for teaching programming (and many who have them would say they are crap FULLSTOP). As are mobile phones etc. You simply cannot use a 640×480, or WVGA screen for editing computer code – its hopeless. Have you ever tried typing in large amounts of computer text with a resistive screen? Don’t bother. It’s too painful. You can of course plug then in to a monitor and keyboard (if supported), but then you are on the same playing field as the Raspi, which is cheaper. Also, unless you have a second PC for cross compiling to Android, the coding abilities are pretty low.

The other devices you link too are fine for their purpose (although less than half the power of the Raspi for a higher price – 150 or 320MHz vs 700Mhz, no GPU, much less memory, but with better I/O, don’t run Linux), but again, unsuited to grass root programming. You can teach low level programming with them of course, just like you could with the Raspi to be honest, but more expensively. Once again, you need a second PC to cross compile the code for them. You don’t for the Raspi – as it runs a full blown linux it can come with compilers etc on board (and will do).

I suggest looking through the educational section of the forum where a lot of this stuff has already been discussed.

Formal media try to differentiate themselves from bloggers by claiming to be professionally run. What with Toms and Wired handling this story so unprofessionally, you have to wonder where you have to go to be sure you are getting the straight story (Rupert Murdoch is on record as worrying about this self-same issue but look at how unprofessional some of his titles are).

In my blogging, I try to get the story right, and take corrections, and I have a much smaller readership that Toms or Wired. And I don’t make money out of blogging. What happened to good old fashioned self esteem?

The best response to this sort of thing is a large-scale response to incorrect reports from irate readers putting the story straight. But strictly putting the story straight: no angry personal attacks etc. Long-time Apple fans from the days when Apple was small and embattled and subject to ridiculously inaccurate reporting will know how little good it does to be too shrill in your response. People other than the unprofessional editorial staff will read any comments published with the offending article.

Fantastic news on the educational package. I am really looking forward to teaching GCSE Computing with the Raspberry Pi. I joined the teaching profession from programming six years ago and this is what we have all been waiting for. I can assure you that we will be using the Pi in education!

Sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen! If the Foundation were to take pre-orders, what would happen? They would all sell out just as quickly as the real orders when the ‘Pi is launched, except that The Foundation will have your money. It won’t give you or anyone else a better chance of getting one, or of getting it any quicker.

Pre-orders only create an administrative burden and offer no benefit to a funded organisation.
– The only possible benefit is if an organisation can’t get funding any other way.

If they took pre-orders, then as Lynbarn said they’d sell out at the same rate as real devices, except that then there would be a really big list of orders to fulfil once they get the real devices, with no real way of knowing exactly how long they will have to wait to get them.

– They could get lost or damaged in shipping. You’d be surprised how often containers fall off ships! (Insurance will cover that, but there will obviously be a large delay!)
– Customs might spend longer than usual inspecting them.
– If the manufacturing yield is smaller than expected, they end up having to deal with customers who have paid but they have no device to send them.
– If yield is higher than expected, they end up with devices they have to sell first-come-first served, annoying the people who just missed out on the pre-order list.

The last couple have even happened to seats at the London 2012 (Para)Olympics, and they are in a much better position to know exactly how many there are available!

Whereas selling the first-come-first served once the devices are already manufactured, tested and shipped – the exact yield is known, and you can ship to customers immediately.

Sometimes I just cannot fathom journalism. Understandably, each newspaper or publication does offer a slant on each article. But when there is not even any justifiable founding for the material, or even accuracy, I refuse to listen to the explanation in fear of being fed further ‘innacuracies’.

On a purely technical point, the sub-head of each page reads “An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!” yet you have confirmed the (entirely reasonable) £25 and £35 price points. Even presuming that the subheader refers to the ‘A’ model due later shouldn’t the subhead be changed to either a “£” in front or “$39.25″ if in USD?

Sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear in making my point. “$25″ plus local taxes does not equal “£25″. At this moment, $25 is equal to £15.83. Add VAT @20% (£1.58) and you get a total sum of £17.41 – a lot of change from the £25 stated on this post. The days of US companies fleecing UK people by using an exchange rate of £1 = $1 is way behind us, and anyway you are a UK company, so where is the missing £7.59 (30% of the cost!) going?

A new article is needed for the front page. Whilst I appreciate that this isn’t quite the same as a commercial outfit, and that the product is expected to ‘sell’ itself, you do still want the ‘Pi’ to be a widespread success, right?

Speaking as an educator, I have learned to be positive. Don’t tell people what something isn’t. Tell them what it is. Simple language and positive statements. Even at the risk of going over old ground again… what can it do, how much will it cost, when will it be available.

All of which is untrue. So don’t let a single brain-dead tech reporter derail the whole project. Get some footage up of schoolchildren using the ‘Pi’. Ask them what they think about it. Ask them what they want to do with it. Ask them what they’ve discovered.

It’s that simple. (And, incidentally, I’m happy to help, if you need it. You know how to reach me.) Please let’s end this negativity and get the enthusiasm and excitement going again.

[…] students on the Key Stage 2/3 and PGCE programmes. However, in an unexpected development, a blog post on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s website earlier this week intimated that Raspberry Pis will not be available to education customers until […]

Hardly suprising, Eurogamers reporting is the trashiest on the internet, they constantly spew twisted bile, infact anything that might generate some web traffic for advertisers. They really don’t care about the consequences of their reporting, as long as the ad money keeps rolling in. Parasites is the only word for them.

Liz, unless you wish to limit initial sales to build volume slowly, it might be prudent to not assure that the direction of price, if any, will only be one way, down. Skinflints like me might be tempted to prevaricate on purchase in case the price drops.

I have been waiting for something like this to come out. Can’t wait to get my hands on a raspberry pi. I been accused of being a Windows fanboy because of my website but, Ubuntu is actually my favorite OS.